The advent of cellular telephone technology enabled users of personal, mobile telephones to communicate with one another across analog telephone networks. In the 1990s, as digital cellular telephone networks began to replace analog networks, and as battery storage life, wireless radio technology and computer processing technology continued to evolve, mobile telephones became increasingly versatile communications devices that were able to communicate with one another not only across cellular telephone networks but also over the Internet. Mobile devices now typically feature advanced processing equipment that can operate a wide variety of applications, or “apps,” and may be utilized to perform wide-ranging functions.
By the 21st Century, many mobile devices began to include hardware for communicating with other devices not only indirectly through a network, such as a mobile telephone network or wireless fidelity (“WiFi”) network, but also directly using inter-device wireless communications techniques, such as short-range wireless transmissions. Today, the most popular form of wireless inter-device communication technology is Bluetooth®, which permits users of such devices to create personalized networks known as Personal Area Networks (or PANs) or piconets for short-range inter-device communication, and does not require a central, networked server infrastructure or access to the Internet. By some estimates, up to two billion Bluetooth®-equipped devices will be shipped to users in the year 2013 alone, as mobile telephones, desktop computers, laptop computers, and tablet computers, as well as media players, accessories, and even automobiles are now regularly installed with Bluetooth®-enabled components for inter-device communication.
Although mobile devices are becoming increasingly powerful, the relative cost of top-of-the-line mobile devices such as smartphones remains substantially high. While baseline mobile devices may be obtained at comparatively lower prices than top-of-the-line models, the computing resources installed on baseline devices are often far less sophisticated, and far more limited, than those of top-of-the-line models. Moreover, as mobile device apps become more advanced, many apps may typically require greater computer processing capacity (e.g., processing power, random access memory or data base space) for short periods of time in order to perform one or more computing tasks or functions. Where a mobile device attempts to execute an app that requires computing resources which exceed its available intrinsic capacities, the mobile device must shut down or deactivate one or more other apps, or delay the execution of the app until additional intrinsic computing resources become available.